With the holidays just around the corner, some people are looking to start a project and build a pallet Christmas tree. Everyone is looking for a few ideas to sand out and do something cool. This is not a complicated project and just about anyone with a few simple tools can create in just a few hours.

Pallet Christmas Tree Project

To get this party started, first we will need to gather a few tools. For this project you will need 1 wood pallet, a skill saw, prybar, a hammer, some nails or a cordless drill and some wood screws. Depending on how you want to finish this project off, you could also use a short strand of lights, glue gun, paint brush and some green paint. a long straight edge with a pencil or a caulk line would work great too. With all of these items collected, you are now ready to start

Found a wood pallet project and you don’t know how to get started? After you have your reclaimed wood collected, you will need to learn how to dismantle wood pallets to get them into proper lengths of various sizes. Some projects don’t actually need you to disassemble the entire pallet but this is a great place to start. Continue reading How To Dismantle Wood Pallets→

Currently, there are not many homes that are heated with wood stoves anymore. But there are some places that still use fire wood to generate heat. For instance, my garage has a little cast iron wood burning stove that gets my work area nice and toasty. Quite a few of my friends also have cabins and shops that are heated with these little wood burning stoves and I have to say that they are Amazing!

What isn’t amazing is the time it takes to gather up enough wood, cup it up with an axe, and stack it all to dry. Some people have the connections to buy a chord of wood and bring it home. Still I’ve seen a chord of wood being sold for as much as $125.00 a pop. When the demand is high people can set whatever price they want. And again, this is where burning wood pallets becomes a great idea.

Wood Pallets as fire wood seems like an excellent idea, but people seem to have a few reasons why they wouldn’t want to burn wood pallets as firewood. Some people say that because the wood pallets are treated, you can’t burn them. Well most wood pallets are treated with heat. They stay in a fire kiln a little longer and a little hotter in order to kill off all the pests that could be living in the wood. Basically this means that the wood is already really dry and safe to burn.

The other problem people have is the nails that hold the pallets together. They are safe to burn and will not harm your stove. What they will do is make it a tough time to clean up the ashes later. To fix this I have come up with a solution and that is using a large magnet to pick them up. It’s fast and easy to get even the smallest nail out of a tight spot. Personally I don’t really separate the ashes from the nails. It’s easy for me to put them all in a bucket and bring them along when I go to the dump.

Having a truck or a way to get the free pallets back to your place is just about the only requirement to use wood pallets as firewood. Oh and a saw. You need a saw to break them down to your chosen sizes to fit your fire pit or stove. And to be honest, some time’s you do not even need a saw. If you’re having a bonfire, just toss another pallet on top!

Dismantling wooden pallets can require a lot of effort especially if your project requires a lot of wood. To speed up the dismantling process and save more of the pallet wood, you can build a simple wooden pallet prybar. This is a little more advanced of a project and requires a bit of welding. Follow along as we show you how simple and easy this project is…

Some of the materials and tools you will need are:

A welding machine

A wire brush to clean the areas of the tubing before welding together

A hacksaw or angle grinder with cut off wheel to cut the steel tubing.

DIY Pallet Pry Bar Step 1

Building a wood pallet headboard for our king sized bed was an easy choice. That said, I figured it was best to figure it out rather than fork out the cash to buy one. There are so few headboards to choose from and I actually didn’t like many that I saw in the stores. At work we have a huge pile of pallets and when the thought came to use them I said why not?

Looking for a plan to put together your vary own pallet wine rack? Well look no further! Follow along our easy step by step instructions and add a classy, rustic looking piece of functional artwork to your home.

***STEP 1***

Cutting The Pallet

A Fresh Take On Pallet Art – Fire Wood Designs by Leah

Adding a beautiful rustic design piece of pallet art to your home is all the rage. Simple and elegant, Fire Wood Designs by Leah are wonderful and all unique. Ever single piece is different and the chosen colors really pop. If you look really closely, you can see the marks from the paint brush as a tell tale sign that these are indeed the real thing.

Every piece of these Fire Wood Designs, are individually handcrafted and one of a kind. Leah Smyth the artist, is a wonderful, bubbly and laid back person. “I just wanted to make something cool that you couldn’t find in a store,” says Leah with a smile on her face. “Sometimes it takes a bit of time to actually make the idea in my head come to life!”

Another one of the cool things is that all of the wood used in Fire Wood Designs are in fact made from pallet wood. Leah gets her boyfriend to drive around with her and be the muscles to pickup discarded pallets and through them in the back of his truck. “I really could not do this without Giordano,” she smirked. “How would I get them home without his truck.”

Picking the right distressed wood pieces is really an art. How Leah matches everything is simply a form of art. When you look at the neatly sorted pile of tools and the mess of the broken apart pallets in her garage, its not easy to see the the end result. Leah is an all around artist and has a nack for creativity. “One day I saw a picture of some pallet wall art and I thought to myself, Ya… I could do that!”

Right now Leah is right in the middle of creating a new batch. All of the art is actually for sale on her Facebook page. Send her a message and I’m sure you wont be disappointed.

Pallets have been around for a long, long time. Believe it or not, Skids (another work for pallets) go back as the 1st millennium B.C. Even the Ancient Egyptians used pallets to store their various supplies and food stores.

In our society, the substantial use of pallets began with the development of the forklift. Back in Word War II, pallets were critical in the logistics operations. As forklifts were used more and more, the general design of the basic shipping pallet, or skid, had to change. There are several patents starting from 1929 that continue to 1949.

What is really interesting about the pallet is where the modern designs come from. As it turns out, most improvements and developments were made during the war to increase productivity. At this time, forklifts were widely being used for the first time and people were figuring out that there was a better and faster way to pick the skids up. From this concept, the 4 way pallet was created. An interesting fact is that the 4 way pallet was not actually patented until after the war in 1945 by a Navy Officer named Robert Braun.

If you want any more information on pallets, I would suggest reading up on them from a credible source. Check out Wikipedia for some quality information:

Wood pallets make the world go around. Every year, over 500 million pallets are manufactured in the USA. 90% of these pallets are constructed out of solid pieces of wood. Building shipping pallets is the largest use of hardwood lumber in the country. Day in and day out, 1.8 – 1.9 billion pallets are working hard, shipping and storing our goods around the country. Combine wood pallets with wood boxes, and the fiber in corrugated boxes, we have the largest single use of wood fibers in any industry within the USA.

If you are passionate about recycling and saving the number of trees being cut down each year, then you will understand our why we use recycled pallets instead of manufacturing new wood products. The idea of reusing pallets is based on the concepts of recycling and auto reconstruction. The awesome thing about making your own pallet furniture is that you don’t have to poses any specialized skill or have a construction background. The pallets already have their own shape and structure. In some cases all you have to do is hook them together, paint them and your project is done! As well as you can usually find pallets around for free.